The American Archive of Public Broadcasting curated a special collection of more than 200 radio and television programs to coincide with Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Content featured in the collection was produced by public media stations between 1965 and 2019. The collection features news segments discussing affirmative action and reparations as well as documentary films like Joyce Chen’s China, China, Land of My Father and Vietnam: A Chicagoan Goes Home.
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and GBH in Boston. It has previously preserved and curated special collections of archival content on LGBTQ communities, 9/11 special coverage and uncut interviews from documentary series such as American Masters, Eyes on the Prize and Ken Burns’ The Civil War.
The Asian American and Pacific Islander Collection includes interviews with artists and writers like Maya Lin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan and Frank Chin. It also features archival pieces on how Asian Americans have been depicted in movies, television and media overall.
Local and international productions from public media archives are part of the collection. Items from PBS Guam and PBS Hawaii cover topics like homelessness in Guam and Okinawa culture in Hawaii. International news coverage includes segments on student protests in Beijing in the late 1980s, North Korea’s nuclear activity in the 2000s and violence against women in South Asia.
